10 septembre 2012

Palestinian Prisoners in Israeli Jails: The Case of Ahmad Saadat

Ahmed
Saadat (C), leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
(PFLP), is escorted by Israeli police as he arrives to attend a hearing
in his trial at the Magistrate's Court in Jerusalem on 9 September
2012. (Photo: AFP - Ahmad Gharabli)

The last time that 26 year old Sumoud Saadat saw her father, the
Secretary-General for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
(PFLP) Ahmad Saadat, was during a court session in 2008.
Sumoud and two of her three siblings are banned from visiting their
father as they constitute, according to the Israeli Prison Service
(IPS), a “security threat.” Her mother Abla and oldest brother Ghassan
are able to visit Saadat as they are both holders of the blue Jerusalem
ID card, which grants them more privileges and enables relative freedom
of movement within the West Bank and the 1948 occupied territories.
The agreement, signed on 14 May 2012 between the IPS and the Higher
Committee of Prisoners which signaled the end of the 28 day mass hunger
strike of approximately 2,500 Palestinian prisoners, contained five
provisions that Israel has systematically violated.
One of the conditions, according to prisoner rights group Addameer’s Quarterly Update,
is the reinstatement of family visits for first degree relatives of
prisoners from the Gaza Strip (who have been banned from visitation
rights for five years) and for families from the West Bank who have been
denied visits based on vague “security” reasons. The supposition that Israel has good intentions is completely flawed.“There
are 700 families from the West Bank who, prior to the agreement, were
prevented from visiting their loved ones in Israeli jails based on
security reasons, as well as the accusation of having no familial ties
to the prisoner,” said Saadat’s lawyer, Mahmoud Hassan.
The families who are still banned from visiting their relatives
behind bars have directed their anger at the International Committee of
the Red Cross (ICRC), the body responsible for facilitating the family
visits to prisoners inside Israeli prisons. However, director of the
ICRC branch in Ramallah Suha Musleh criticized the agreement for not
taking into consideration the role of the ICRC in its conditions.
During the hunger strike in Israeli prisons, or the Battle of Empty
Stomachs as it is popularly referred to, the Red Cross’ team of doctors
would visit the hunger strikers whenever the IPS allowed them to do so.
“Every day, permits are issued by Israel to family members to visit
the prisoners,” Musleh commented. “Yet, we were not a part of or even
asked to be a part of the agreement. As far as I know, no one has a copy
of the agreement,” she added.
“The fault is on the Palestinian side for not taking concrete
guarantees for ensuring the conditions of the agreement to be upheld,”
Hassan emphasized, “and on the Egyptian mediator for not taking any
official guarantees and instead relied on the good intentions of Israel.
The supposition that Israel has good intentions is completely flawed,
because it bases its decisions purely on politics, not security.”
In 2002, Ahmad Saadat was arrested by Palestinian Authority (PA)
Special Forces, after the PA succumbed to pressure from Israel who
accused Saadat of organizing the assassination of the far-right Israeli
Minister of Tourism, Rehavam Zeevi in October 2001. Zeevi was a known
proponent of targeted assassinations of Palestinians and forced
expulsion, and his murder was seen as a response to the targeted killing
of Abu Ali Mustafa, the previous secretary-general of the PFLP, in his
office in Ramallah.
A month later, four members from the PFLP’s armed wing, the Abu Ali
Mustafa Brigade were arrested in Nablus by the PA’s General Intelligence
Services and together with Saadat, were held in the Muqata compound in
Ramallah.There was an order of six months of solitary confinement against Saadat that was renewed every six months for three years.The
PA, contrary to the popular reaction from Palestinians, condemned the
assassination and Jamil Rjoub, the former head of the West Bank
Preventative Security Forces was the one who issued an ultimatum against
Saadat to turn himself in or face arrest.
On 1 May 2002, Saadat and five other PFLP members were moved from
Muqata to Jericho prison in a deal between Israel and the late president
of the PA Yasser Arafat that ended the 33 day siege on Muqata.
Four years later, on 3 March 2006, the Israeli occupation army raided
Jericho Prison, which under the façade of PA control was actually
guarded by US and UK observers. The time between Israel’s arrest and
sentencing of Saadat, a total of two years, involved more than 30 court
sessions, mostly held in Ofer prison on the outskirts of Ramallah.
These sessions allowed for only two members of the Saadat family to
attend at a time, and Sumoud had to alternate with her two brothers,
sister and mother to ensure that everyone got to see him. Sumoud got to
visit her father four times.
“Inside the court room,” Sumoud recalls, “we weren’t allowed to speak
to my father. We weren’t allowed to physically touch him, even for a
handshake. We tried to communicate with facial expressions, that was
it.”
Defining herself as the closest to her father, Sumoud attributes that
to the fact that her father was missing from her life for her first two
years, as he was behind bars. “He made an extra effort to get closer to
me, since I kept rejecting him and referred to my uncle as my father.”
Saadat was sentenced on Christmas Day in 2008 to a life sentence of
30 years in prison. A few months later, there was an order of six months
of solitary confinement against Saadat that was renewed every six
months for three years before the May 14 agreement was signed.
Saadat refused to recognize the military court, which couldn’t charge
him with anything concrete and relied only on circumstantial evidence.
He was charged with being the head of the party that carried out the
assassination of Zeevi as well as being responsible for actions that
were carried out by various members of the PFLP, dating back to the
1980s.
Sumoud affirmed that her father would refuse to be released based on
the “good intentions” of Israel, a provision that Israel uses to reward
the PA for resuming negotiations, a term that has been synonymous with
PA concessions. Saadat is adamant that the only way he will be released
is through a prisoner exchange or an end to the occupation.Saadat is adamant that the only way he will be released is through a prisoner exchange or an end to the occupation.On
23 September 2011, Saadat went on a hunger strike for 23 days to
protest against his solitary confinement. The hunger strike ended as a
result of the brokered deal between Hamas and Israel that saw captured
Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit of five years exchanged for 1027
Palestinian prisoners. Saadat remained in solitary confinement.
Since the capture of Shalit, Saadat’s name was among those put
forward. As news of a possible prisoner exchange began to leak out, high
profile members of Hamas, including Aziz Duweik and politburo Khaled
Meshaal, personally assured the Saadat family that he was without a
doubt among the prisoners returning home and not one of those sent to
exile.
Rumors oscillated between the release of Saadat along with popular
Fatah man Marwan Barghouti to their continued imprisonment.
Nevertheless, when final confirmation of the list of prisoners due to be
released in October was out, Sumoud and her siblings were shocked that
their father’s name was not one of them.
“My father always told us to never get our hopes up so high, since
the Israeli Prison Service are so unpredictable,” Sumoud said. “But it
was still a huge shock for the family, especially after Hamas guaranteed
us that he would be released.”
On April 17 this year, Saadat joined a mass hunger strike, which grew
to involve approximately 2,500 prisoners out of the total 5,000
Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. His health deteriorated rapidly,
and he was transferred to the Ramleh prison hospital, where he was
still kept in total isolation.
Former hunger striker Thaer Halahleh, who went 77 days without food
and was also in the Ramleh prison hospital, relayed to Sumoud how even
on the brink of death, Saadat was kept in a small cell all by himself,
padded with some sort of nylon sheets that prevented him from catching
any snippets of conversations from the other prisoners. The only time he
saw the prisoners was during the night the agreement was signed on May
14, where he was brought out in a wheelchair.
After three years in isolation, Sadaat secured a major triumph and is
now in Shatta prison, sharing a cell with other prisoners. Although his
wife Abla and oldest son Ghassan were able to visit him after the
hunger strike ended, his other children are still banned from doing so,
on the pretext of being considered as “security threats” by the IPS."Saadat refused to go unless all the other prisoners got the same privilege."Saleh
Hammouri, the French Palestinian former prisoner who spent seven years
in jail before being released in the second half of the deal’s
implementation in December 2011, was in Hadarim prison with Saadat back
in 2007.
“Once, the prison warden, who used to show up barely once a month,
came in the morning and informed Saadat that he had a private visit from
someone,” Hammouri recalls. “A private visit is a big deal, because it
means that the visit is conducted without any physical barrier, and
usually they are granted only in the most urgent cases or after dozens
and dozens of applications.”
Saadat had asked the warden if the private visit was for all the prisoners. The warden replied that it was just for him.
“Saadat refused to go unless all the other prisoners got the same
privilege,” Hammouri smiles. “The prison warden took that as a personal
insult against him, and treated him, let’s say, less favorably from that
day on.”
Lawyer Mahmoud Hassan acknowledges that the end of Saadat’s isolation
is a victory, and is adamant that the release of all Palestinian
prisoners is not an unattainable dream, as it is presented in
international law.
The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids the forced transfer of persons
from occupied land to the territory of the occupier. Therefore Israel
using the excuse that it does not give permits to family members because
they do not hold Israeli IDs is fallacious because it is primarily
based on violating international law by transferring the prisoners in
the first place.
“Israel from the very first day intended to use the prisoners as a pressure card for negotiations,” Hassan stated.
The most recent example is Netanyahu promising
to release 125 prisoners incarcerated before the signing of the Oslo
Accords and the establishment of the PA in 1993 if Abbas returns to the
negotiating table, or conversely vowing not to release prisoners if the
PA was to go the UN.
“If there was significant pressure from the Arab countries and the
world in general,” Hassan continued, “the prisoners’ cause will end with
the release of all prisoners, precisely because it is an international
cause, as Israel is contravening the Geneva Conventions.”